Boucher's Anti-DMCA Bill Gets High Profile Allies

Landaras writes "News.com is reporting that a newly-formed alliance called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition is throwing their support and lobbying efforts behind Rep. Rick Boucher's (D-Va) Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. Members of the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition include Intel, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and BellSouth. The EFF and the American Library Association are also in support."

Comments

Hatch And Bono

[grendelkhan]

Now that Fritz Hollings (D - Disney) is gone, the only major stumbling blocks in the senate will be Senators Hatch and Bono. I think we have a shot if Rep Boucher can get this past the House.

Re:Hatch And Bono

[southpolesammy]

The only reason that Sen. Hatch can pitch the ideas that he does is due to the fact Utah is so overwhelmingly Republican that as long as he wants to be in office, he will never get voted out. The end result of this is that he can pretty much say anything at all publically without fear of reprisal from his constituents.

The GOP and other right-wing/corporate leaning organizations know this and use him to pitch ideas that other Senators can not safely propose without possibly drawing the ire of their constituencies and risk getting replaced in 2/6 years. By contrast, Democrats do not have this luxury in the Senate, as there is no state in the nation that is as heavily biased towards Dems as Utah is towards Republicans, therefore you rarely ever see bills in the Senate with as extreme a left-leaning slant as Hatch's right-leaning bills.

So even if Sen. Hatch's ideas seem completely crazy to everyone, including his own party members, they do serve a purpose, which is to make the moderate conservative bills seem less crazy and outlandish, and therefore to get more credence. Coupled with the lack of an extreme liberal counterbalance to make moderate liberal bills seem more plausible, what we're left with is a permanent tilt towards the right in the Senate.

Money Talks, Folks

[palutke]

It's time we started providing financial support for the elected officals who do the right thing. Rep. Boucher's contribution page is here.

By supporting him (and explaining why), we reinforce his commitment to protecting our copyright rights, and show his peers that there is a group of people (voters) who care enough about the issue to contribute.

A good start, but in the end probably ineffective

[keraneuology]

It is a good start, but in the end not much will change. Your average consumer doesn't care much about copy-protected or not-copy-protected CDs and even if they have "this product does not conform to the CD standard" in big bold letters on the cover of the latest hairball that Brittany Spears coughed up they will still buy it just because they have to own whatever it is that Brittany Spears puts out.

I am waiting for a law that says that producers have a choice: they may a) allow consumers to back up their music/movies/games or b) agree to replace on demand and without charge any CD/DVD that has been damaged and is no longer playable.

To whom should we address our letters?

[Karrde712]

Assuming that slashdotters would like to add their support in a mail-in campaign, to whom should we send our letters? Would it be best to send it to the Personal Technology Freedom Consortium, to Boucher directly, or to our own senators and representatives?

What do other slashdotters think would be the most effective action?

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

So the question is: who has deeper pockets?

The state of American politics is at an all time low - votes are now strictly gathered by the $, either in congress or by the voting public.

The kicker? Politicians can voters on their side by taking high-profile polarizing issues (like abortion), but then vote on all other issues based upon the pocketbook of the lobbys. The DCMA and "Patriot Act" are two clear examples.

I would have never have said this before, but I'll say it now: next time, I vote for the ACLU.

The most important section...

[sploo22]

IMHO, the most important section of this bill is section 5(b)(2):

(b) FAIR USE RESTORATION- Section 1201(c) of title 17, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in paragraph (1), by inserting before the period at the end the following: `and it is not a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention does not result in an infringement of the copyright in the work'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

`(5) It shall not be a violation of this title to manufacture, distribute, or make noninfringing use of a hardware or software product capable of enabling significant noninfringing use of a copyrighted work.'.

Finally, at least some of our rights are being upheld.

What can we do??

[cOdEgUru]

Instead of debating whether this would pass or what hurdles it will have to clear to pass, can we talk about what I can do to help these guys?

And yes, we can be cynical and weep all we want about how money wins in the end, but how many of us did a darn thing about it?? If someone wants to put together an Anti-DMCA rally in D.C, heck, I will be with you shoulder to shoulder..

Lets not whine about how we are defenseless against the MPAA lobby's millions, lets talk about how we plan to kick their ass!

This is similar to my argument about outsourcing.. When news break out that another firm has outsourced to India/Vietnam/China/Russia, there is a sudden outpour of anger and indignation, but once the last post is written, no one seems to care.. What we need is a permanent revolution (yes I am well aware of who said that!)..

Re:This certainly smells of election-year politici

[emtboy9]

No it doesnt.... this is something that Rep. Boucher has been working on for quite some time, and its been mentioned on slashdot quite a bit as well here, here, here, and here.

and that was just the top four in a search of old stories by score...

And you are correct, at least, in that this is a bold move, and definitely in the right direction. It is indeed a folly to think that media lobbies will just ignore this, which is why we ALL need to come together and slashdot congress both via email and snail mail to get things like this pushed all the way through.

And besides which, they may have almost unlimited funds, but we have unlimited bandwidth collectively...

Why would these companies sign on?

[bigskank]

I can understand why the EFF, the ALA, and even an underdog like Sun are signed on as supporters of this bill, but what benfits are coming to companies like Qwest, Verizon and BellSouth - all major telecom providers? These companies are spending money to fight the DMCA, but what financial benefits does the destruction of the DMCA offer them? Is Telecom innovation being hurt this much by the DMCA so much that they're willing to take up arms and fight?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see the DMCA nuked. But it would seem they've found something in this bill that suits them quite nicely in a financial sense, which immediately raises my skepticism level about how positive their support really is.

Re:Why would these companies sign on?

[femto]

They are the suckers who have to wear the cost of actually policing the DMCA. Receiving take down notics, removing content, dealing with pissed off customers, loosing pissed of customers, deciding whether content really is infringing, etc. Meanwhile it costs the studio's automated web crawler and takedown notice generator $0.00001 to generate each notice.

Notice the similarity between the economics of DMCA take down notices and spam?

Re:Why would these companies sign on?

[julesh]

Read the bill. It doesn't "nuke" the DMCA. It just amends it slightly to permit you to break copy protection for purposes which are otherwise legal. And requires copy protected CDs to be labelled accurately and prominently. All the rest of the DMCA provisions aren't touched by it.

So what?

[Alexis de Torquemada]

The content lobby will just counter with a Copying Unceasingly Nurtures Terrorism (CUNT) or an Unlawful Replication Gives Al-Qaeda lots of Yen (URGAY) act. Linking copyright violations to child abuse and even terrorism is en vogue, and as long as this kind of manipulation can be used for profit, they won't cease to try. Anyway, I hope this one does make it through.

Re:This certainly smells of election-year politici

[Ian Wolf]

This certainly smells of election-year politicing

Normally, I'd be inclined to agree, but Rep. Boucher has been championing this issue for some time now.

Story 1
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
Story 5

There are of course many more. This bill was originally introduced in 2002. This guy is the real deal.

I didn't go back far enough to get the link of his interview here on /., but I'm sure somebody probably already has since I started this post.

Wouldent this money do better with the EFF

[SteakandcheeseUm]

I've Donated to the EFF, have you?

EFF's Donation site

Re:I'm still skeptical though

[zenrandom]

I'm sorry but the system of equations used to determine that percentage are copyrighted. You are only entitled to the percentage.

Re:If the DMCA was repealed...

[Overzeetop]

Troll, no doubt, but it's a nice opening...

You don't have small children, do you?

Have you ever seen what they can do to a DVD? Have you tried to re-purchase "The Little Mermaid" on DVD in the stores recently? Have you ever wanted to make a copy of the movie that had JUST the movie (no mandatory ads in the beginning)? Did you know that VHS tapes degrade over time and viewing (and that MacroVision prevents their copying?) If you owned a copy of Song of the South, wouldn't you like to have a backup?

Have you ever wanted to leave your original DVD ro CD in the Jukebox, where it's safe, and burn a copy to take with you on vacation?

Did you know that these rights management schemes are effectively useless against for-profit pirates (aside: I'm not one of these)? Have you considered that, with 6 MILLION, ACTIVE file sharers, that accounts for less than 0.1% of the population (aside: I'm not one of these either)?

Now, ask me again: Would these new laws really make a difference to me? Hell yes. It's a PITA to rip and recode a DVD. It's a PITA to dub a VHS tape. It's a PITA to rip and burn a backup CD. It's a trivial process to copy VHS-VHS with two standard VCRs, if no macrovision is involved. It's illegal to manufacture an interface box. It would be a trivial exercise to build a jukebox with a recordable (CD/DVD) drive and let you dub a copy. You can't do that 'cause it's illegal to manufacture such a beast.

Quit treating me like a d@mned criminal.

chances are VERY high

[argoff]

You see, what's going on here is that copyright enforcement is in a world of hurt right now - and so the media industries are trying to microregulate every other industry to do the enforcement for them. Right now we are seeing a back-lash that will likely succede, because the tech companies together have far more economic clout than Hollywood. This will also likely cause all hell to break loose.

This is not new, it happened in the industrial revolution too. Unlike farming, the industrial revolution required a mobile and educated workforce. It was a disaster for the plantation system who envisioned that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. At first they reactred by making tougher slave laws, till it got to the point you couldn't even teach a slave how to read, then they responded by trying to "force" the industrial northern states to enforce their slavery restrictions through a series of heavy handed regulations, when that went to hell the southern states tried to break off from the union and fence themselves off from the north.

Today the information age requires the free flow of information, and it is a disaster to those who rely on the copyright system whose vision of the information age was to use inventions like the internet to impose copyrights to the far corners of the earth. At first they responded by making copyrights last (effectively) forever, and imposing punishments for copyright infringement that rival those imposded for violent criminals. Then they pushed through the DMCA, to "force" all the other industries to impose copyrights via heavy handed microregulation. Now that's having problems they are trying to fence themselves off from the rest of the world by using DRM.

So watch out. SCO was a peace walk. All hell is about to break loose.